Kentucky Horse Park

Lexington, Kentucky

The Kentucky Horse Park, designed for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, was the winner of the 1980 Honor Award, Kentucky AIA Awards Program. The park - built on the site of the former Walnut Hill Stud - is in the center of Kentucky's famed Bluegrass Region, long recognized as the hub of the nation's horse industry. With a 1973 construction cost of $27,000,000, the park was designed to capture the true essence and beauty of a working Kentucky horse farm. Planned to provide an educational experience through its museum and a recreational experience through the pleasures of a natural and historical setting, the Park is home to over thirty-five breeds of horses and hosts just under a million visitors annually. As a self-sustaining center of excitement, cultural splendor, entertainment and education, the Kentucky Horse Park is unique. The project team had to create a park for which no precedent existed - anywhere in the world - by fusing related concepts into a unified theme. The planners and consultants, comprising experts from all facets of the horse industry and related disciplines, brought together a vast quantity of information from which the governing concepts, and finally the park itself, grew. The second integral element of the Horse Park's development was architectural research. The team wanted to create spaces in which large numbers of people would move easily, but still maintain the image of a tranquil, working Kentucky horse farm. The project team envisioned the Kentucky Horse Park as a model of a central Kentucky horse farm, complete with the beautiful horses, plank fences, rolling bluegrass pastures and unique farm structures that are trademarks of the region. Aside from the areas for equestrian events, the project team wanted to provide facilities that could be used by visitors every day. They developed two recreational centers adjacent to the Visitor Activity Complex - the picnic area, with a shelter, grills and tables, and the Horsebac